xp and drive letters

I have a computer in with an 80gb hard drive, a 250mbzip drive and a dvd/cdrw drive. It's running winxp pro w/ sp1a. the hard drive is drive E the Zip is drive C and the cdrw is the D.

Now the hard drive is the primary master
Currently no primary slave ( will be another 80gb hard drive )
the cdrw is the secondary master
the zip drive is the secondary slave

Why are the drives labeled that way and how can you change them.

I disconnected the zip and the hard drive is still E.

Is this another microsoft "confuse the user" feature or what?

Once you've installed, the only way to change the drive letter of your system partition is to reinstall.

You didn't ask how it happened, so I can't go there. But I had a similar situation once, it happened because of the way that I performed the install. No amount of coaxing would allow me to change the drive letter of the system partition.

the only thing I can think of is that it grabbed the zip as drive c from the beginning.... Not sure why it would do that though! I figured I'd have to redo the system to change the system drive but for some reason I wasn't able to change drive letters on the zip and cd either! I was wondering if the sp1a install was hosed. I have been having some other problems with the system as well...telling me it can't find the install files for realplayer..... I didn't install realplayer! So I don't know what's up with this thing.... i guess i'll wait till the final decisions are made on what drives are going in and redo the system...

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Originally Posted by Shard92

Why are the drives labeled that way and how can you change them.

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Click Start, then Run, then type diskmgmt.msc and press Enter. You can change drive letters there. You may need to move one or more to vacant letters for a bit to re-arrange to your heart's content.

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Originally Posted by rgharper

Click Start, then Run, then type diskmgmt.msc and press Enter. You can change drive letters there. You may need to move one or more to vacant letters for a bit to re-arrange to your heart's content.

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Can you move the install drive without hosing the registry? Or will a disconnection of the zip and repair install fix it???

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Originally Posted by MobilePCPhysician

Can you move the install drive without hosing the registry? Or will a disconnection of the zip and repair install fix it???

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Unfortunately you can't move either the boot or system drives with this (or any other) method. What you could probably do would be to remove all external drives, then all IDE devices except a hard drive as Primary Master and a CD/DVD as Secondary Master, then do a repair install to fix all the boot references.

It's also possible (though I will tell you to take this with a large grain of salt because I've never had to try it!) that setting the drives up as above then running the repair console and using the FIXMBR and FIXBOOT commands may put the drive letters right but I can't guarantee that it'll work. At the very least it should not harm the system.

It happens when you have formatted volumes present during an install that windows setup can 'see' it'll give any present c,d,e etc etc... - don't have any present - simple ! :)

HOW TO: Restore the System/Boot Drive Letter in Windows - Microsoft Knowledge Base Article - 223188

You can 'adapt' the procedure described ;) - 90% chance of it going 'good' ...;) - most errors will be fixed at console with fixboot if it does go 'awry'.. no guarantees :devil:

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This article describes how to change the system or boot drive letter in Windows. For the most part, this is not recommended, especially if the drive letter is the same as when Windows was installed.

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Thanks all I just wiped it and reinstalled, it was a new system so nothing to back up even... I did disconnect the zip while I installed and that took care of everything...